Free to Play Cast: SWTOR Bugs Crash Competition Hopes Ep. 130

On this week’s show, we take a look at BioWare’s recent cancellation of their planned “Operation Victory” ESL, raid challenge, look at Storybricks closing and their attempted buyout of SOE, and dig into the numbers “proving” PC gaming will dominate all platforms throughout the decade. All that an more on this week’s Free to Play Cast!

If you have submissions for the show’s Weekly Bombs, have questions for the panel (nothing is off limits!), or just ideas for what you want covered you can now send them to magicman@mmobomb.com. You can also be a guest in the show, just send us why you want to host, and what topic or game you would like to cover.

Free-To-Play Cast is the official podcast (and videocast) of MMOBomb.com about free to play multiplayer online games. Free-To-Play Cast takes on the week’s biggest news with plenty of opinion, weekly bombs, community feedback, guests, laughs thrown in for good measure and much more. Have fun and expect a new episode next week!

Mike "Magicman" Byrne has been a part of the MMOBomb family for years and serves as the site's current Editor-in-Chief. His love for MMOs and gaming in general has led him to covering games for numerous websites including Gamebreaker TV and XIV Nation where he proudly displays his fanboy flag for FFXIV:ARR.

6 Readers Commented

How does anyone expect to pay for anything without anything coming in? F2P or not, as a company, they need to find ways to keep the income coming in regardless of what they want to do with the money. Nothing is free in life, there is always something you need to trade for in exchange. I find it pointless for anyone to complain about cash shops and other means to make money and I also find it pointless to complain about access to the game by paying and have players who have no technical knowledge for bug reporting but you have to see it as stress testing the servers. There is some things we don’t agree on when they’re handling these games for revenue but again, maintaining a game to be publicly accessed region or world wide is not cheap. period. As person who maintains a budget and do technical work, buying a component that has no graphical processing power for games but for basic office needs, it is VERY expensive just to hold down 300+ employee’s with what they use. A single server used in this building to manage just recordings and live stream alone cost 6,000 bucks. How much do you think our room we call a Data Center is worth? the power consumption? and with so much equipment in use 24/7, tomorrow one component may fail, commercial parts price point is pricey.

You HAVE seen the way the market is going though, right? AAA game studios think they’re allowed to put a game out for sale with online only, including the campaign (Titanfall, Evolve, WoW, etc), charge for access to it, and yet we’ll never, ever have a way to access the game once the servers go dark. F2P eases this up somewhat, and creates so many people to play with, it’s a literal endless pool.

I don’t mind Cash Shops by the way. I mind when a game goes Pay To Win. I realize some service and access MUST be cut off, but if I’m renting time (like with SWTOR “pass” system), I won’t be playing. My money went to Guild Wars 2, since it’s systems are the best.

You buy the game, have full access to it, you can buy certain services, and expansions you pay for bring the largest chunks of content, with constant stuff in the cash shop (cosmetic, giving no bonuses over other players) rolling into the store. If SWTOR let me buy the ability to play PvP freely, I’d play it devoutly. It doesn’t. Can’t raid, can’t PvP, yet plenty of F2P games give me this without restriction.

That’s why my money goes to those games. I don’t mind paying to unlock classes/characters (Marvel Heroes), extra content (GW2), but games like WoW want a cash shop, a monthly fee, paid for services, AND demands money for expansions, and games like WildStar and Elder Scrolls were banking on this system being acceptable. It wasn’t, and now they’re changing.

My post does not have to do with anything about specifically AAA studio, I agree on your comment as stated “There is some things we don’t agree on when they’re handling these games”. My post is all about complaining about purchasing founder packs and how people don’t understand that running this crap is freaking expensive. limited to access on features when advertised its supposed to be free is highly understandable on something to be upset for something which is basically fake advertisement.
You misunderstood my post, thanks for the negative vote.

I agree with KESTA24 on founders packs and early access. if games are advertised as free2play then why aren’t they. rather than making those of us we can’t or don’t want to pay to play on the off wait 1 to 2 year before we get into a free2play game.
Surely there no reason why free2play game can’t be free from the start and have better cash shop items.
Take H1Z1 dev’s for instance, on there website at the bottom it says “FREE TO PLAY. YOUR WAY.®
OUR PHILOSOPHY IS SIMPLE. FREE GAMES. NO COMMITMENT.
AND IF YOU WANT TO BUY, IT’S ON YOUR TERMS.” yet you have to pay for Landmark and H1Z1 even though they should be free, plus you have to make a commitment by paying to play.
I also have a question to Mike and Jason is: If you can design make a free2play game what genre would go for?

I have to give A bomb too mmo industry for sinking down in to Rubbish they call Founders pack, I mean in old days you would get payed to test out games find bugs and help develop games, but now you have to pay to play something unfinished and in the end people that test out the game are 12 yeas old that has no idea about their responsibilities, reason why so much bugs is left untouched at the end of betas.
As for answer too question of the week I have no one instead how about doing that with people that created the game, but idea in itself is great and should be used more, just add people that work behind the scene .